Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize stands in front of a room full of important government people; he wants his audience to recognize that being indifferent is not the same as being innocent – indifference, “after all, is more dangerous than anger or hatred”.

He forces the listeners to wonder which kind of people they are. To him, during the Holocaust, people fit into one of “three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the bystanders” and he forces the bystanders to decide whether or not to stay indifferent to the actual situation. He takes the time to list various actual civil wars and humanitarian crises (line 17 of his speech) and contrast them with WWII.

He makes sure that his audience realise what is at stake “Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment” [for mankind]. He wants the audience to be really affected by what they hear – so he talks to them in their condition of human being: “Is it necessary at times to practice [indifference] simply to … enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine”. And he also talks to them as government people with their duty and the power they have over the actual conflicts. He wants them to compare themselves with their predecessors during WWII: “We believed that the leaders of the free world did not know what was going on … And now we knew, we learned, we discovered that the Pentagon knew, the State Department knew.”

Wiesel finishes his speech by expressing hope for the new millennium. We believed he addresses these final words to those who will refuse to stay indifferent. But it seems that Wiesel would count them in the minority: “Some of them -- so many of them -- could be saved.” probably refers to this minority.

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3 years ago